Help Installing Crane XR3000 with Mallory Unilite Please

[RPM Resto & Custom]

Hello everyone. I just joined this site. I own and operate a restoration shop in central NJ and do a lot of work for members of the NJ Z Club. I ran into an issue today that I'm not sure how to remedy if it's even possible.

I have a customer's 75 280 here that I installed a warmed over engine into last winter along with restoring everything visually. He has it back to upgrade the fuel and ignition systems a bit. I ordered up a new coil, the Crane XR3000, and Mallory Unilite distributor for the car and was getting ready to install them today. However there don't seem to be any brackets in the XR3000 kit that will install the correct optical trigger in place of the stock Mallory unit. After talking with Crane they said they don't show an install kit for the Mallory 6cyl distributor. Are these parts not compatible or am I missing something here? Is it possible to use the Mallory optical trigger with the Crane box?

[Mike W]

Not sure that I can help you out on the compatibility between the Unilite and the Crane but I can tell you how I installed the Unilite in my 260Z.

I ended up using all Mallory products for my ignition setup and had no compatibility issues what so ever. I used the Unilite 45 Series distributor (p/n 4563901) which does not have a vacuum advance as I am running Webers. I also used the Mallory HyFire 6AL which is a capacitive discharge ignition system (equivalent to what MSD provides) as well as the Promaster coil from Mallory (p/n 29440). The only real issue that I had, and I think this might have been specific to some wiring issues that I had with my particular car, was getting my tach to operate correctly. I ended up using their active tach adapter and it worked flawlessly. Wiring was also straightforward and it was a fairly easy install.

I will warn you however, that the Unilte is apparently very sensive to voltage spikes and noisy power lines and this is even acknowledged in some of the Mallory literature. Based on that they also sell a product called a circuit guard (p/n 29371) which is a filter circuit to ensure that the sensitive electronics in the distributor are always receiving clean power and signal. I have been running this setup for almost a year and it has been trouble free.

Hope this helps.

Mike.

[RPM Resto & Custom]

Mike thanks for the tips. I spoke with one of the Tech guys at Motorsport and he said there's no need to change over the signal trigger from the Mallory to the Crane one. I'm working on getting everything into the car now but I'm going to have to figure out which wires from the XR box go to which wires from the Mallory since the color coding will be off now.

Any ideas how I can match these up?

[RPM Resto & Custom]

After talking with Aaron over at Motorsport again I don't think I'm going to be running the XR3000 at all. Apparently there is no real benefit over the stock setup. Does anyone agree or disagree with this statement?

Looks like the distributor should be fairly easy to wire up then. Brown to Ground, Green to Coil -, and Red to ballast where the 12V ignition also comes in, then from ballast to Coil +. Now I just need to dig out a test light or wiring diagram to find out which is the 12V ignition wire.